by Minerva Spencer | Jun 27, 2018 | Uncategorized
Happy Wednesday Gentle Readers! I’m excited and pleased to introduce you to a member of HTH who has made such a positive and energizing impact on the group!
You might know Christa from her active presence in the forum and for introducing the highly popular Hot Topic Tuesday (or for her fascinating experiences as a volunteer worker!) but now is your chance to get to know a bit more about her and her writing.
Minerva Spencer: Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today, Christa! Before we start talking about your writing, tell us a little about yourself and what you write.
Christa Bedwin: I’m a world-travelling, adventurous, homeschooling single mom. Now that my son is six feet tall, intelligent, curious, and well mannered, I have a little more time to write and I’m loving it! I grew up in the mountains on a cattle ranch in Canada, but now I really love islands and Europe (and being warm!) best.
I love friendly communities with people who care for each other, places that are organic and where people care for the environment, and beautiful, vibrant, colourful landscapes. We have travelled to a lot of fascinating communities and countries with farm volunteering, and met a lot of wonderful and crazy characters living curious mixtures of modern and historical ways of life. Those widespread, interesting approaches to living worm their way into my books.
MS: You have certainly had a fascinating life!! Do you write full-time or part-time?
CB: It’s funny – my parents told me that to be a writer wasn’t a real job, but I’ve made almost all of my income over the past two decades either writing or editing anyway!
I started out as a high school chemistry and math teacher, but within my first 3 years, McGraw-Hill had hired me on a full-time contract to write and edit chemistry textbooks. In fact, I had actually asked the woman who connected me with that job through a “Word on the Street” fair if she knew anyone that wanted any romance novels, since I had three written so far (that was in 1999).
She laughed and said no, and shook her head in that “every amateur thinks they can write a novel” way. So I said, “How about chemistry textbooks? I have always wanted to write a chemistry textbook.” She said, “Well, actually… yes.” I wrote an audition (from Australia, using the new Environment Canada webpage for research – the technology boggles!) and got the job. That spun into more work and ever more work and distracted me from my fiction for, oh, 15 years or so!
The silly thing about my writing career at the beginning was that I lacked the confidence to put my fiction out there. It was easier to take all those science-writing and technical contracts that fed my son and I. Now, I did serve the world well through writing and editing engaging, accurate, interesting textbooks for teens and teachers, but I think that the highest good I can do in this world is through fiction. With stories, we can help make society be a better place by helping people to think wiser, happier thoughts. I think people who read interesting, curious books are more likely to think of out-of-the-box solutions to life’s troubles, to ponder others’ motives, and to take more risks with new situations. I love readers.
MS: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
CB: When I was twelve, and I realized that I could use my own difficulties to write to help other people through their hard times. I didn’t really mean to keep on having a tricky sort of life, but… wow, I have been through a lot of situations and seen life from a lot of angles, now. When I get a little peace and ease, I write, write, write! And finally, finally, I’m getting brave enough to share my thoughts with the world. I’ve finally collected readers who love what I’m writing – too bad I didn’t know how to find those people sooner! But I’m here now.
I love to laugh at the absurdities of fate and the twists and turns life throws at us, and it’s so fun to be able to write situations where everything works out in a satisfying way. As my grandmother told me long ago, romance novels are great for making women feel good. She used herself, a widow, and her neighbour, whose husband was often away with work, as examples of women who can feel warm and loved by reading when life doesn’t give us the fairy tale. Now I know, intimately, that spinsters/single moms need love too. We are just as bereft as the widows are, and maybe even more, because we have no memories to warm us! Plenty of married women don’t have as much warmth or love as they would like, either.
So we need romance. Joy. Adventure. And books can help to fill that need. Even with little kids, we can steal moments for ourselves and find solace in the pages of delicious books. I think that’s one of the most important things in the world, helping others feel good and live better. Happiness is so important for parenting, living, serving others, staying healthy.
MS: What drew you to write in the historical romance genre?
CB: Something I always loved about reading Harlequin Presents in the ‘80s and ‘90s was the international travel aspect of the books – the food, the architecture, the nature, the different ways of life. I’m sure that’s part of what led me to travel so much myself, and now I’m in a place to share that rich multicultural smorgasbord of life with readers, who might not be able to travel so much.
At the time I dreamed up Caterina’s Renaissance, I was living on a little island, and completely unable to find a man to date, much less a husband. Somewhere in my despair at this deficiency in my real life, I started to dream of a hero from the Renaissance. Someone strong, yet learned. Someone who had travelled in his own time. Someone who wasn’t addicted to a smartphone! A man from the past seemed ideal.
Combining world travel and history just adds an extra layer of excitement and spice, I think. I love reading historical novels myself. With all the characters in the past, it’s easier to excuse human failings, somehow – no distraction being annoyed about the foibles of modern society that way!
MS: If you could time travel, what era would you visit?
CB: I know that some writers like to find one time period and stick to it, but when someone asks me my favourite colour, I say “rainbow.” My answer to this question is: many!
I have travelled to almost fifty countries now, and I write historical and time-travel romances back to a variety of time periods. So far I have written about Renaissance Venice, Enlightenment-era Edinburgh, post-Roman Cornwall, and 18th century Acadian history in Canada-France. I just love all the things there are to learn and share, all the colour and life and traditions and food and fabrics and technologies and… oh, it’s so fun.
MS: Are there specific books or authors who have influenced you as a writer?
CB: I love what Maeve Binchy said about her characters starting out as losers and getting better by the end of the book, and I try to do that. I think our power as authors is to help our readers see their way out of difficult situations sometimes.
At the moment, I’m also devouring a lot of M.C. Beaton. She writes such funny characters and fun situations. I am glad she’s so prolific because I love escaping into her books – they’re like comfort food. My editor recently told me that of all the people she’s editing right now, she’s chosen my “heart-warming characters” as her bedtime reading. That’s who I want to be with on the bookshelves and in history – on the lists with the other authoresses who love to make people feel good and put smiles on readers’ faces.
MS: Who’s your favorite historical figure?
CB: There are some amazing women in the past, and in general we haven’t heard enough about them yet! I like to explore time periods where women, or at least some of them, had a certain amount of personal power in society.
In Caterina’s Renaissance, Veronica Franco, a Renaissance Venice cortigiana onesta (an honest or intellectual courtesan), is a key player in helping the hero and heroine along on their adventure. In real life, Veronica Franco was known and loved for her intellect and wisdom, and she had enough power in Venice to help shape peaceful politics for La Serenissima during her lifetime.
It is inspiring to study her way of being, how she was so feminine and yet so powerful, and to weave that into a story. I believe that just reading about women who have held power and done good in their times helps us to find our own power and our own unique ways to navigate society in our own times. I think that modern women are often almost afraid of our femininity and the power we wield. Sexy women have been so villainized by the media and even women’s magazines. Through studying historical women who understood being sexy, smart, powerful, and good, I think we can gain more confidence in our own roles in the modern world.
In a medieval romance that is also on my plate for later this year, Queen Balthild, a Merovingian Queen who was a slave before she was a queen, has an influence. The real Queen Balthild was instrumental in outlawing slavery in her realm (what is now France) by the year 650 AD: about 350 years earlier than England, and 1200 years ahead of America! Another strong and sexy woman I’m excited to wrap a plot around.
Enlightenment-Era Edinburgh, before Victorian times and the Regency Era, was also a period where women were granted a certain intellectual and societal respect. I’m setting a little trilogy in that time period, too. Village and farm women of all ages have sometimes held more power than the wealthy classes we have traditionally read about. I’m exploring that in an early medieval book too.
MS: Tell us about your latest release and what’s coming next for you.
CB: Caterina’s Renaissance is a romance between a modern-day west coast island woman and a man who appears in her bed fresh from Renaissance Venice. She’s been dreaming of him, and the chemistry is very powerful from the beginning.
The book takes a turn for the unexpected when it turns out she’s had a dragon living with her for some time. He has been invisible to her, but Massimo and her neighbours can see him. He’s sort of a mischievous fellow who sings in a deep voice and likes to taunt the cat and laugh at Caterina and Masssimo, but who turns out to be a key helper for their adventures into the past. This book is a lot of fun, and my readers tell me that they have a huge crush on Massimo and think about the book when they’re not reading it. My characters are nice people to be around and interesting to think about, and that makes me so happy.
Something that surprised me about this book (well, actually, the dragon jumping into it was a big surprise, but it turned out we needed him, so okay) is how much readers love the neighbour couple, Frank and Maureen. They’re modeled after the real neighbours I had when I lived on the island this book is set in. The real Frank really does have a giant greenhouse, and Maureen truly is that insightful about people… whether they can actually accomplish the magic feats they do in the book, I am not sure, but I would not put it past them!
MS: What are you working on now?
CB: Well… a rainbow of things!
Blodwyn’s Redemption: The sequel to Caterina’s Renaissance. The villainess who was trying to destroy what others held dear in Caterina’s Renaissance loses her memory and goes back in time to post-Roman Cornwall. She learns about her own goodness and value to the community as she heals from terrible injuries, and when she remembers her villainy in the past, she’s horrified. Luckily, the hero loves her enough to go through fire – and time – for her. It’s a passionate, complicated tale, and yet really so simple: love conquers all, if only we can accept it.
Idelle’s Inheritance (out in July 2018)/ Idelle’s Englightenment (Fall 2018)/ Moira’s Modern Mayhem (Winter 2018) is a time-travel trilogy set between modern-day Edinburgh and the inspiring Enlightenment period in that same incredible city. It all begins when Idelle inherits a Georgian house and the clan lands from her aunt, and tumbles back in time to meet her “cousin” Moira. Moira helps Idelle solve a legal problem, and then, frustrated with the limitations forced on her in the 18th century, decides to follow Idelle to the future.
In Idelle’s Englightenment, we’ll find out how Idelle transforms her life from the rut she was stuck in, and how she learns to balance love, her career, and her new inheritance. Should she trust that Graeme, who she’s wanted for so long, really does want her now? Or would she be better off striking out on her own? Moira’s around sharing the house, insisting that the world change for the better, giving various bits of good and bad advice, and making blunders and discoveries of her own. If the first book in this series is like a cozy tea and scone break, this book is more like a surprisingly spicy curry meal!
It’s only in Moira’s Modern Mayhem that Moira’s fire is fully unleashed. Like Idelle, she ends up being faced with deciding exactly what it is she wants with her life. To be loved like there’s no tomorrow? To make a difference in the world with her career? What is it that matters most? And does she have to give up one to have the other?
Thanks so much for joining me today, Christa! You can read more about Christa and learn about her books at her website and the links below.
Happy reading!
Website address:
www.christabedwin.com
Two social media links, if you wish to share them:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christa.bedwin
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christabedwin/
by Minerva Spencer | Jun 9, 2018 | Uncategorized
I’m on an insanely short deadline to get Idelle’s Inheritance (a little time-travel novella in Englightenment Edinburgh) out the door… naturally that means I’m procrastinating down research rabbitholes that aren’t even relevant to what I’m writing right now. But I just discovered the most amazing family, all descending from/related to Lord Byron, the infamous poet, lover, and Venetian-sea-swimming playboy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
This needs sharing, and saving for later!
I did not realize before today that Ada Lovelace, who did a lot of the mathematics leading to the first computers (of course, most historians mention/credit it all to Charles Babbage, and forget to speak of Countess Lovelace, sigh), was Lord Byron’s daughter!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
Recently, since historians have started adding women to the historical record where they belong, she is getting her proper credit as the world’s first computer programmer.
She had three children (daughter the coolest, see below), had an active brainy life doing things like translating articles about engines from Italian, and died of uterine cancer at 36. Ada’s mother, Anne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Byron completely hated everything about Byron’s love of love, so she saw to it that Ada was extremely educated to try to counter the likelihood of madness. Well, Mama Anne didn’t manage to educate the tendency of the Byron line to die in their thirties (as her father and grandfather also did), but she did create a line of extraordinary women!
— a small detour to the other side of the blanket —
Lord Byron (his first name was George — did you know?) left England just a month after Ada was born. Maybe it was because he also had a child with his half-sister? Ada, actually, is officially named Augusta after said half-sister, with whom he seemed by all accounts to be in love.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_Leigh
Unfortunately, that daughter (if she was indeed Byron’s or not) ended up living one of the many lives that illustrate that men can sleep around all they like, but when women do, it often ends in poverty and tragedy, sigh.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Medora_Leigh
— end detour —
But… back to the legitimate line, who fared so much better and became famous. All because of that magic societal word, “legitimate” and possibly due to Lord Byron’s notoriety and poetic fame (spurred on by his estranged wife’s vocal, outspoken hatred — so she did the line a good turn that way, perhaps? It can’t have been pleasant for Ada as a child, though).
Ada’s daughter, (Byron’s grand-daughter) Baroness of Wentworth (pictured at the left), is credited with having brought the Arabian breed of horses to England (particularly, the best breeding stock). Like, actually going to Arabia and bringing back those beautiful horses. What a time in history!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Blunt,_15th_Baroness_Wentworth
And her daughter spoke Arabic and Turkish owned a famed Arabian horse-breeding stable from age 44 to 84 (oh good! I’ve just turned 44. There’s hope for me yet. And MC Beaton only really got going at my age too). I love finding stories of strong women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Blunt-Lytton,_16th_Baroness_Wentworth
Thank goodness that Byron created one legitimate offspring before he became an expat.
And maybe thank goodness that he married such a mismatched woman for himself, and she was so obsessed with erasing his memory in her daughter that she educated her so heavily! The world’s first computer programmer was a woman.
And that made me wonder about their antecedents, too.
Ah, lookie here, his daddy “Mad Jack” also loved the ladies, as he was multiply married. Lord Byron, of course, was also rumoured to be mad, and like Byron also died in his 30s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byron_(British_Army_officer)
His granddaddy also had a cool nickname, “Foul Weather Jack”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byron
He was born in 1723 and one of his interesting roles was as the governor of Newfoundland, over by Canada
by Minerva Spencer | May 14, 2018 | Uncategorized
Rocket yourself back into the past: Go WWOOFing to research your next historical novel!
Out-of-the-Box Solution 1
How It Works 2
Other sample experiences 5
Writing schedule: 14
But . . . 14
Other Organizations 15
by Christa Bedwin
I have been writer and editor for twenty years. (I now write time-travel romances with my characters exploring various cool time periods and places in the past, mostly but not completely in Europe.)
Even ten years ago I realized a big problem with our job – too much time with the bum in the chair just isn’t healthy. An editing colleague died of an aneurysm at her desk, working on a late deadline, and I vowed to make my health a priority. (Sometimes I do better, sometimes I do worse, but the intention is always there!)
As a single mom, though, budget matters. I pulled years of working all night on editing deadlines to make ends meet and feed my son and I. On top of this, I really wanted to homeschool my son when he reached his early teens… how to break out of the loop and feed my writer’s soul at the same time?
Out-of-the-Box Solution
Enter WWOOFing, stage left. Fitness, budget, historical research, and teenager management all solved at once.
Here’s a picture of my hands after I’d washed them as well as I could, on our second week. No callouses yet, but at least you can see I was getting time outside! My hands were dry and cracked and I was happier than I had been in years.
WWOOF is a worldwide organization of organic farmers who welcome volunteers. Depending on who you talk to, it stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms, World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or maybe Weekend Warriors on Organic Farms (this last one hints at local opportunities – you can find incredible adventures and inspirational exercise outside your daily box, right on your own doorstep).
How It Works
You sleep and eat for free in exchange for usually about a half a day’s labour – that leaves you the afternoons and a couple of days off per week to write, tour the area, get to know other WWOOFers, or just nap. On top of this, WWOOF is an organization of people who are committed to teaching others organic farming technologies, and, you guessed it, history writers – a lot of these techniques mean returning to the past.
That’s not to say it’s the easy life – it’s work, and the living conditions are often primitive, but it’s work that is so worth doing, satisfying, great exercise, and for learning about things your historical characters might do in their daily lives, the experience is second to none.
WWOOF hosts take the time to do things right. You’ll meet artisans, committed organic warriors, builders, doers, growers, musicians, teachers… so many wonderful people. Real characters – strong and admirable people who you’ll find yourself modelling your characters after. Here are some WWOOF farmers learning about old methods of making charcoal in a burner through the Shropshire & Edges Permaculture Network.
I met one woman on an ancient island who had an unlimited heart and space for adding wwoofers to her table and her home and finding us work in her garden. She was passionate about passing on organic living and growing methods, and ancient ways of life, from learning to use the willow trees and harvest their long, supple whip branches with the seasons, to how to use the compost from the composting toilets. She was by no means wealthy in terms of money, but she is one of the wealthiest people I have ever met in terms of endless resourcefulness and a thriving belief there was enough for everyone, with a little creativity. Her methods ranged from collecting food that grocery stores threw away to feed her animals to trading services with other islanders and both constantly giving and receiving. Surely this is how the ancients lived in survival economies.
I helped another woman in the mountains of Abruzzo who was the same way. She had hardly any money, but she is one of the richest people I have ever met! She had a house on a hill and food growing. People were constantly giving her things – in fact, it was a friend of hers who had sent me along to help – and she was just as quickly giving things away. Everything from food, to clothes, to building materials and furniture… and of course, Italian food. It was there that I had my first taste of carob pods, harvested straight from the tree and dried to keep year-round… now, definitely one of my favourite foods and one that I ate throughout our subsequent Italian and Croatian travels. If you ever get a chance, you must try them. They’re divine. Here’s what they look like straight from the tree. YUM.
You’ll also meet wwoofer host pets – helpful dogs and fierce cuddly cats. Fluffy sheep and friendly horses. Irascible goats and curious pigs. Sweet poetry-singing chickens who help you with the weeding. All of these little people add so much flavour and sweetness to romance stories, woven in as comic relief or simple emotional sweetness. [Aside I’ve learned, if you make the pet a dragon, they can help solve a lot of plot problems too! But chickens, the dragon’s close relative, are also a sweet and delicious addition to a day of weeding the garden or as an emotional support. Alan Bradley gave Flavia de Luce Esmeralda the chicken for a pet.]
By the way, many of us writers need our cats, and would not travel long without them. No worries. You can bring your pets wwoofing to many farms. Here are our two cats, totally blissed out in the sunshine and warmth in a Victorian-era glass house. To answer what you’re thinking, the cats quickly adapted to the travel and to meeting and negotiating relationships with the other pets at our various destinations. The grey one you see here always tends to fatten herself up when there are dogs around. When we stay places with no dogs, she slims down! But she’s definitely the clan defender. In this photo, the cats are fifteen and eight years old, and the older black one still, at seventeen, behaves like a kitten when there are new adventures to be had – especially if it’s a new barn full of mice! Travel and exercise are good for writers’ cats, too.
WWOOF hosts also tend to be the people who keep heritage breeds – one of my favourite discoveries in recent years are adorable little Ouessant sheep. The lambs are literally cat-sized. (You can say it – I’m thinking it! Squeee!)
They originally come from a French island off the coast of Brittany called Ouessant island, and the story is that the menfolk were often away fishing, and so the women enjoyed having these smaller sheep, since they had to do all the work.
(If you’d like to learn more about these adorable sheep, I poached these two photos from the following web page:
http://www.wovember.com/2016/11/10/the-ouessant-sheep-of-france/
Soon after I discovered Ouessant sheep, I rhapsodized about them in a chat with my favourite textile historian https://woollyhistoryofbritain.wordpress.com/ and her first reaction was that the black colour of those sheep would have been considered quite valuable in Medieval times, as black dye was formidably expensive in the past, but many people wanted black clothing.
Then, in a future historical farm detail, an old sheep farmer somewhere in my travels (I really can’t remember where or when, but I remember the man!) explained to me that if you want to keep the sheep as black as possible, you need to give them little blankets or keep them indoors, as they tend to bleach out in the sun.
Yes, I might have learned all those details on the Internet… but the story and the characters in your head develop so much more when you’ve had an opportunity to feed the sheep, participate in the spinning, speak to the people who are raising the animals, living the life, really doing the things that people did in the past.
There are WWOOF organizations in most countries of the world, and you can join any one you like for a small annual fee and surf their listings of farmers looking for help. Just go looking on the internet and you’ll find wwoof.us, wwoof.ca, wwoof.fr, wwoof.it, etc.
Other sample experiences
Other recent but very historical learning experiences that I’ve had recently with WWOOF hosts (and this isn’t all, but there’s only so much room on this page…)
- Making French goat cheese the same way it’s been done for centuries– incredibly simple, and incredibly delicious! Summertime entertainment on this French island includes storytelling evenings on a Saturday in the barn, all the adults and kids on haybales and quilts and the stories (in French) the same as they’ve been for generations. I still play Breton music at the pub with the farmer that taught me the cheesemaking at the pub, most Sundays. He also kindly organized for my son to spend a day with the local vet (as that’s my son’s career aspiration). Volunteering just gets you “in” on experience you never even know about as a hotel-staying tourist.
- Helping to restore an Irish castle – I absolutely loved limewashing the walls, the way humans have been doing to our homes for twelve thousand years or so! For a day or two I got to work with a young Michelangelo-grade attractive charming Italian man who would answer the deepest of philosophical questions really, really slowly, but so sweetly – he admitted that I got a lot more work than he did by the end of the day, but it was all so fun.
We were preparing some of the old stables for a Buddhist retreat group from France’s Plum Village that would be coming to stay at the farm. We were so inspired and deliciously well-fed at that WWOOFing place that all of us volunteers showed up to work on our day off to help meet the deadline. Not at all because we had to, but just for the joy of meeting the goal and in respect for the owner and the crew… and because we were having so much fun despite the hard work, I guess!
[As a side note to learning about characters, when wwoofers are not well-fed, or feel less well-loved or appreciated, the amount of work they/we get done really drops off. It is not any bad intention of the volunteers, but I saw it happen in several different situations, and was clearly just a function of human nature. Doesn’t that explain so much about poverty through history, and why certain real and fictional characters have behaved the way they have? These lessons, absorbed through your daily meals and conversations, settle so much more deeply into your writer’s psyche than simply reading about them in history books.]
My son had an opportunity to help repair and restore ancient farmhouse windows and to enjoy the company of good working men (any other single moms in the room will understand how valuable and irreplaceable this is) and to study their Irish accents (in other words, try to keep up and understand anything they were saying!). He’s turning into quite a comedian, my son, and the sense of fun and good “craic” he had with that Irish crew sure set a tone for our travels, and our humour and jokes often roll back to the sort of way we learned of talking there. Just being there, at the castle, part of the crew, interacting with people while we worked with them, was invaluable for his development as a characterful teen. And of course we have a whole new perspective on Irish characters and Irish speech!
Here’s an example of some language problems we had with a friendly local who tried to speak to us in the pub one day. I understood that he was being friendly, but I couldn’t figure out why he thought we were just like two horses in a garden. Was that some Irish idiom? What did it mean? I asked around, but nobody seemed to know.
We were all in the pub a few days later and had the following exchange. You can see not just the fun trickiness of understanding a new language and culture, but also the poetry and play of Irish thought and conversation. No wonder Ireland’s full of writers!
My son also got to learn Buddhist philosophy from the Lord of the manor while helping him to prepare incredibly delicious and varied vegetarian lunches in the manor house kitchen (that’s right – he was chopping vegetables and preparing meals in a centuries-old stone-floored, wooden-countered kitchen, while I was outside working in an enormous, equally ancient high-walled garden). Here’s a picture of the garden. Conrad restored it from a bramble patch, but a hundred and two hundred years ago, it had twelve gardeners growing food for a huge number of people. There are also orchard trees inside the wall. (The wall is mainly to keep out rabbits – important to keep the doors closed!)
My twelve-year-old son wasn’t too sure what to make of Conrad’s lectures on Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist ways of life, but we had great talks about those ideas gleaned over vegetables while we were weeding the garden or walking to town in the afternoons. Now, two years on, some of those ideas have definitely helped to form his framework of understanding of people in the world.
And for me, the writer, I have another inspirational, generous, sexy, mysterious, can-do-anything, can-manage-employing-dozens-of-people, is-an-artist-and-invested-in-inspiring others, hero to model some future fictional hero from.
And we definitely grew a root there in Ireland, too. Someone asked me about “putting down roots” once on our travels, and I realize that rather than loosen any of the strength of our root to home, living for a little while and getting completely stuck into the soil of various places has allowed us to put down more roots, giving the trees of our life more stability. We definitely feel a root of home there at Creagh Castle – a place where we have experiences and people we love and miss. A community we could go back to, roll up at the pub, and be greeted with open arms.
They say that you should write what you know. You should write about your home. That’s definitely easier. But writers may be surprised to learn just how quickly you can sink into what may have seemed a foreign place, to start with. To understand and play with the language and the humour. To contemplate the lives of those who have lived and do live there. To feel, really feel, the atmosphere of a place in the bricks and mortar and stone and trees and soil.
By the way… if we ever doubted the rumour we heard in the local pub that our host was related to English royalty, the truth of it is proven to us over and over as we see his face on many portraits from centuries past in museums from Scotland to France.
Our room at that farm was in the old dairy, used for centuries to milk cows and keep cheese (delicious Irish cheddar!) and milk – and yes, it was exactly as cold as a fridge in there, except when we had the fire going. We had glorious French doors onto a balcony overlooking a river valley that was just absolutely painted with flowers that spring. Across the valley was another large manor farm with ancient buildings, which led me to dream of relations between the people living on those adjacent hills over time. Did they love, or hate, each other? Both manors had been there for centuries, so I suppose they’d been through their cycles of both those options, through the generations.
We didn’t have a car at the time, and that meant that we walked the mile or two to the pub in the village, often – an excellent opportunity to feel history in a way you never do when you go everywhere on wheels. In most periods in the past, most people walked. If you want to write the past, do that. We did. We walked ancient roads through enchanted flower-strewn forests and through muddy farm fields. This – really, no joke – was the walk to town.
And here’s a little stream we cross on that road, with holly and ivy actually growing together – something I never saw, growing up in the Rockies as I did.
It wasn’t even until we were leaving that I heard there was an ancient ring fort buried in the forest at the bottom of the drive. It was so commonplace to the people living there that they hadn’t thought to mention it.
At the bottom of the drive (this painting of the drive is by the castle’s owner, Conrad Frankel), there is a creaky old castle gate, and a real gate house (we met a man who was born and raised in that gate house on the way home from town one day, and in the course of our month there, we met his brother, too!)
One Sunday, we took the ten-inch key and opened the giant door to the crumbling 15th-century castle and just went in and looked all around and dreamed and dreamed of the real medieval families who lived there. You can still see the remnants of the plasterwork and imagine the furniture and the fabrics and the lives in those rooms with the high corbelled ceilings and the giant, giant fireplaces… you can’t really get that same feeling in touristy castles. There’ve been so many people through, spreading their excitement and their energy around. But when you volunteer to help restore things that have just been quietly owned, lived in, crumbling for centuries…. for a writer’s spirit, this is gold.
Bottling apple cider made with apples from the farmer’s own orchard in Cornwall, and then using the natural yeast from the bottom of the carboys to patiently make absolutely delicious sourdough bread that week in our own wwoofer kitchen. Dave, pictured here, from Cotna Eco Retreat, and who is a sourdough expert as well as a cider expert, tells me that in the past, people made sourdough starter for bread just using the natural yeast found on the apple skins. All it takes is a little feeding and patience.- While he was teaching me to prune the apple trees, I could hear the medieval church bells ringing from the church in the village just down the valley (you get a good view of the church from the horse field). That farmer also took me on a walk all around the neighbourhood (by which I mean the various fields and vales, with very few houses left), showing me homes that had been abandoned and telling me why that had happened for each. Showing me ancient footpaths that led straight to the church steeple – which we now couldn’t see over the trees, but you would have been able to see it a hundred and two hundred years ago. On that walk, he educated me about how in the past, when rural Cornwall was more densely populated than now, people made much more optimal use of the field areas than they do now, and in the hedges, there were not just hedgehogs, but all kinds of birds, all the trees that yielded firewood, the bushes that yielded the berries…
I’m using knowledge gleaned during that visit to now write about my hero building his best friend an extension to his wattle-and-daub hut in post-Roman, Pre-Christian 5th Century Cornwall.
Sara, pictured here with Dave, also had so many good stories to tell. She has a glorious yoga studio on the property, and, actually, her tale of her romance with Dave (they met in India) is something worth hearing. Something that gave me hope for my own romantic future… - Want to bottle wine the traditional way in a little stone backroom of an ancient farmhouse? I did that in Tuscany, and helped weed tomato fields with the same farmer with glorious views of the ancient Neolithic settlement and ancient pope’s hideaway town of Orvieto. That host was also an incredible historical resource when I later e-mailed him to ask details about things I wanted my characters to do in his neighbourhood in Renaissance times, adding a wealth of detail about neighbourhood relations and inter-town arguments and battles that happened back in the day that I never would have gleaned online (as most of it would be in Italian).
- In Sicily, I helped a Sicilian stonemason build a wall out of very heavy (pessandra!) rocks (pietri) for a few days. Working with someone is a great way to work on a language, too. Being surrounded by hot white limestone really got me into the Italian mood. Then I went along to the coast of Sicily, slept in my tent with my cats by the sea, toured Ragusa province’s incredible Baroque towns, and finished writing my latest novel in cafés no more than 20 steps from the sea, where the coffees were excellent, Italian, and 80 cents.
There was also a 17th-century Scottish castle with views from my room to the sea that were like paintings, and a 16th-century Irish farmhouse lovingly rebuilt by a fascinating romantic figure named Aidan. There were other homeschooling families, musical geniuses, donkeys and gardens and milennia-old-towns torn by war and communism… and so many characters to meet… but I have to stop some time! I will write here again, so if there is something specific you’d like to know about please ask me. ☺
Hopefully I have inspired you to give this type of historical adventure a try yourself. If you’d like to chat more about it, please find me through my website, www.christabedwin.com or on Facebook or LinkedIn (as Christa Bedwin).
Writing schedule:
A key to successful wwoofing is that you have to roll with the situation. You may not have the freedom to dictate your schedule all the time… and actually, I have found that this requirement to simply accept circumstances and do what you are asked to do is probably one of the most relaxing and rejuvenating states of being for the mind. It just takes the stress away from thinking all the time, and really gives you time to just be, to soak in the beauty of nature and the quirkiness of people, to relax our modern stressed minds, and to ponder and dream about plots and characters and settings and ideas.
As I mentioned with Sicily, when I first rolled up there, I didn’t really have any plans aside from enjoying some time in that place, meeting people, and helping to weed gardens or build walls or whatever presented itself. I just let myself unwind.
Then, when I did go to the seaside, 27,000 words finished my novel in a mere four days! Though I hadn’t really seemed to be working on my novel while I built walls or marvelled at Baroque architecture or tried to talk to the Sicilian neighbours about their milk cows that they’re driving back and forth from barn to pasture the same way Sicilian peasants have done for centuries, my head, peaced out and content in a historical way of living, gentle, with a rhythm instead of a schedule, as people lived in the past, delivered the words when the time opened up to do so.
But . . .
But I.. have kids… don’t speak the language… travel with my pets… don’t have a vehicle… have a disability… whatever your “but” reason is for not getting out there, rethink it. If you don’t really want to, if it’s not your bag, fine. I understand that this kind of opportunity is not for everybody.
However, if you are feeling the pull, if you would really like to try, then don’t swallow any idea of “I can’t.” You can. Just as we all have different life circumstances, so too do wwoof hosts. There are wwoof hosts with children, who accept pets, who eat special diets, who speak English and Japanese and Esperanto… everything. The essential core of the program is that they can use your help to accomplish their work, and they are keen to teach you. As long as there is willingness, generosity, and good will on both sides, many hurdles can be surmounted.
That’s really the message of this blog post: just relax into the history. Go find the people of this world who are preserving and living the past, and help them do what they do. Get your hands dirty with it. Help build. Help grow.
In exchange for your willing labour with fascinating projects, you will receive a wealth of experiential knowledge and colour for your historical writing that is unmatched by anything you can beg, buy, or steal anywhere else.
Other Organizations
You can get involved in real projects through other organizations and initiatives, too, of course.
Eco-retreats where you get involved:
Cotna eco-retreat, with Sara and Dave above, is just one of many ecoretreats that takes paying guests as well as volunteers. cotna.co.uk. These exist all over the world – wherever you want to find your history!
Historical reconstruction projects to get involved with. Here are some examples of organizations:
- https://digventures.com DigVentures do crowd-funded archaeology where you can buy a day/weekend/week’s experience digging, cleaning, documenting finds, etc.
- Britain’s National Trust offers many historical volunteer projects.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/find-an-opportunity
Eco and animal rescue voluntourism is also growing – be a part of elephant sanctuaries in Asia, scientific studies of koalas in Australia, or turtle breeding in the Galapagos. That’s not as historical, of course, but maybe it ties into your novel about the love between two servants of a maharaja…
Christa Bedwin grew up in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains on a cattle ranch and started her career as a chemist and chemistry teacher. She now enjoys her life as a world-travelling freelance writer and editor, finding fascinating settings and experiences to help shape her historical time-travel novels. Occasionally but not always, funny wise dragons and/or magical realism leap into her books and her real life, too .
She has travelled to almost fifty countries and has worked as a rancher’s daughter, logger, inspirer-of-women, casino girl, chemistry and math teacher, lime wall restorer, road works flagperson, coffeeshop baker, laboratory chemist, heavy equipment operator, security walker, oil company secretary, fundraising organizer, homeschooling travelling mom of teen, Mensa national newsletter editor, youth worker, ranch hand, jilleroo, construction worker, artist’s model, organic squash picker, yoga, belly dance, mantra, meditation instructor, and of course, writer and editor… what next?
by Minerva Spencer | May 6, 2018 | Uncategorized
Finding your setting… how about a castle? You could own this one for just five pounds sterling.
There’s a special energy to being surrounded by old buildings. It’s one thing to dream of my red-haired heroine who might, abstractly, have been a baker in some village on this island where now I live, back in the 18th century.
But she, her children, and her daily life leap so much more into my reality when I practice yoga in this centuries-old downstairs bakery and sit for a while, just being with these stones, put together in this wall so long ago.
The whole story grows from having even once stepped into this room and marveled at the old bread oven. Standing in front of it, staring inside at the marvel of engineering that it is, one can’t help but wonder at how hot this small space must have been, how redolent with the smells of baking bread.
Seeing the ancient timbers crumbling just where the plaster meets the stone in the corner, it’s easy to imagine strong men installing these timbers when they were new. Touching the cool, damp stones as I take my high-tech runners off so that I can step onto my yoga mat, it is easy to imagine my historical heroine pressing her hot, tired forehead against these same cool stones.
Here is another such view.
There are some things that you see, some places that you go and feel how they are, and just immediately the story happens. It might not spring, fully formed, to mind, but after you put your eyes and your body in the presence of that view, all of a sudden, that seed is planted, and, sooner or later, it grows into a story that you have to write down.
When I was staying at Orchardton Castle, volunteering my labour in exchange for room and board (and what a room! Soaring ceilings, fireplace, and this view to the sea with sheep dotting the fields), my Facebook friends thought I was somehow faking or painting that amazing soft Scottish light.
But I wasn’t.
Nor was I faking this incredible sweeping staircase – my feet will never forget this plush red carpet. Some day I will write a heroine who plays with her cat while she sits on this staircase. What is she wearing? A silk dress? Something homespun? Is she waiting for the pirate who built this house to come home? Reflecting on far-away children? Pondering business accounts?
It’s funny, when we just dream about old houses as abstract things in the past, we don’t think of all those lady characters we write sitting on the staircase. This one, however, demands it. And I know that my cat loved peeking through the banisters, so there would have to be a cat in this story, surely?
And those ceilings! I know from experience that one can sit on that staircase and let one’s eye trace the patterns over and over again. Maybe our heroine will do that while she strokes her cat, sitting on the plush carpet of the staircase. Through that door to the left that you see there is an incredible drawing room, with its wood plank flooring, enormous windows on that same view to the sea, and ceilings that recall the royal family. Throughout the house are hints to the pirate (yes, pirate!) who built it, including his heart-shaped family emblem. The servant’s staircase, which would be straight ahead here, is solid wood too, with a rope-drawn wooden elevator for carrying things up and down, out of sight of the lord and lady. This castle is forty-eight rooms of historical discovery and mystery.
And now here’s the punchline of this article – you could own this castle, yourself. The woman who owns it is actually, seriously, raffling it off. Tickets are only five pounds sterling. The draw is May 18, 2018. Enter here:
http://www.winyourcastle.com/internationaltransfer.html
Dumfries and Galloway is a wonderful county to live in, and this castle is walking distance from the village of Auchencairn. You could own this writers’ retreat and always have room for guests (paying or not!) and friends, and all the atmosphere you could ask for to write historical Scottish novels, with or without sheep and pirates. I think the RWA ought to wint it and use it as a chapter house for us all to stay in now and then!
Postnote: If you don’t win the castle, you can still visit castles for atmosphere, of course. And read about some of them on blogs… Here’s one that’s under restoration and owned by a real-life Scottish hero who openly shares his restoration adventure on his blog (in fact, this same hero had actually bid on Orchardton Castle in the past! He was twice the runner up at auction, but he didn’t get it, so he’s restoring Balintore Castle instead.) https://balintorecastle.blogspot.fr/
The BBC offers plenty of programs that we can access on YouTube to help us dream. Some of my favourites with historical settings and information include modern people in old homes: Escape to the Country and Restoration Home; and modern people actually living and trying out old ways of life: Secrets of the Castle, Tudor Monastery Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Victorian Farm, Victorian Pharmacy, Edwardian Farm, and Wartime Farm.
by Minerva Spencer | Apr 28, 2018 | Uncategorized
Today I’m talking to Karen McAtlin on our Member Spotlight.
Minerva Spencer: Before we start talking about your writing, tell us a little about yourself and what you write.
My name is Karen McAtlin. I was born and raised in Colorado. I now live in rural Iowa with my third husband and three cats. I have two children, a son and a daughter. I have seven grandchildren, two in Minnesota, two in North Dakota, two in Colorado, and one who was called to Heaven when she was three. I did medical transcription for about 20 years. I had my own transcription business for most of those years.
I started writing at a young age and wrote my first manuscript, a contemporary romantic suspense, when my kids were little. After that, life interfered and I didn’t write again until 2016.
I just finished the first draft of a manuscript that I started in 2016, a historical romance that takes place in 1918. I also finished a historical romance short story that goes along with the novel. I have a series planned with several more books to go along with those, and ideas for more after that series.
I chose to write historical romance because I love history and would love to time travel. Since that isn’t an option yet, I time travel through my writing. My writing tends to have a tragic element to it along with the romance.
MS: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
KM: I first realized I wanted to be a writer when I first learned to read, I think. It was very early. I loved to read from a young age. I especially loved Nancy Drew books. I was very young when I started writing my own stories. I wrote stories all through the years while growing up.
MS: What drew you to write in the historical romance genre?
KM: I love history and love to research so it was the logical choice. I would love to time travel to the past and experience it firsthand.
MS: If could meet anyone in history, who would it be?
KM: That’s a hard question. There are many people I would like to meet. Probably top on the list would be Abraham Lincoln, as well as Chief Ouray and Chipeta. I would also like to meet James Reese Europe and so many others.
MS: If you could time travel, what era would you visit?
KM: That also is hard to pick just one. I would like anywhere from 1860 through the 1960’s, all of them if possible. If I had to pick just one, it would be the 1870s or 1880s.
MS: What are your goals or plans for publication?
KM: I originally wanted to go with a traditional publisher, but now I’m thinking more along the lines of self-publishing, mainly because you have more control over everything in Indie publishing and I’m used to being my own boss.
MS: What are you working on now?
KM: I’m working on a short story that is kind of a prequel to my series, and also book 2 in my series. I’m about ready to start editing the first short story I wrote, as well as book 1 in my series.
Thanks for joining us, Karen! And below are a few photos of Karen’s writing muses….
Here are a couple of ways you can reach out and connect with HHRW member Karen McAtlin:
https://twitter.com/klickersue2
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012744452138
Idelle’s Inheritance (out in July 2018)/ Idelle’s Englightenment (Fall 2018)/ Moira’s Modern Mayhem (Winter 2018) is a time-travel trilogy set between modern-day Edinburgh and the inspiring Enlightenment period in that same incredible city. It all begins when Idelle inherits a Georgian house and the clan lands from her aunt, and tumbles back in time to meet her “cousin” Moira. Moira helps Idelle solve a legal problem, and then, frustrated with the limitations forced on her in the 18th century, decides to follow Idelle to the future.
